Sunday, March 31, 2013

I Have Another Case of Duggaritis

What is it that compels me to click on Duggar links or turn the remote to their show even though I know I'm shaving IQ points off my brain every time I watch a video or program featuring their family?  I cannot help myself. It's somewhat like my trichotillomania, which, by the way, is  getting much better. On the other hand, I'm merely substituting one compulsion for another one. What's worse, pulling one's hair out by the handful or being drawn to clips of the Duggars? I'm not sure there's a clear-cut answer to this question.

I saw the episode where the Duggars toured the Great Wall of China. Any trip, even if it's to the nearest ant hill, must begin with a JimBob narration  stating the historical context a la Mr. Obvious of the "Bob and Tom" radio program. Then the Duggars begin their descent up the wall. The steps bother the Duggar offspring. Some of the younger Duggars worry that they'll fall down those steps and never see their mother and father again. At the risk of sounding rude, if I were  a young Duggar, this would for me be not so much a worry as a fantasy or pipe dream.

Then you see all however many Duggars there are by the time you count spouses, the next generation, and shirt-tail reltionship taggers-along, a number which appears to approach the triple digits. One cannot help but wonder about the colossal carbon footprint being left in the wake of any Duggar entourage visit anywhere. The diapers have to go somewhere (or at least the human by-product has to go somewhere), or has Michelle figured out a way to make her daughters potty train the babies before they reach the age of one month, presumably to help manage the family budget? Surely she wouldn't advocate early potty traning for environmental reasons, or she wouldn't have spawned more children than can fit into a regulation basketball game at a given time.

One clip shows the Duggar grandchildren in their Easter finery. The little girl looks respectable and appropriate enough in her purple-topped and white feathery-bottomed dress, but little whatever his name is, Maackenzie's baby brother, looks as though he is dressed in materials even the Salvation Army or the Goodwill Store couldn't have sold. It reminded me of that part in The Sound of Music  when Captain von Trapp  didn't approve of Maria's dress. It went something like:

Captain:"Put on another dress before meeting the children. "
Maria: "But I don't have another.
When we enter the abbey, our worldly clothes go to the poor."
Captain: "What about this one?"
Maria: "The poor didn't want it."

I suspect the poor would've rejected Baby Grandson Duggar's Easter finery as well.


A Duggar blog maintained not by the family itself but by two people who are either zealots or stalkers (there's a fine line) talks about the Duggars' Easter preparations and celebrations. For one thing, the Duggars do not use the evil word Easter.  Don't ask me what's evil about the word Easter, as I haven't a clue.  Instead they call it Resurrection Sunday.  If they really want to change the name of a holiday, more power to them, but many people all over the world manage to convey the true meaning of Easter to their children (I'm not necessarily saying that my own parents are among these people; my brother and I were really into our chocolate Easter bunnies and other confections) without changing the name of the holiday. The Duggars don't decorate eggs. Instead, under the direction of the older girls,  the little ones bake heart and cross cookies and frost them.  Is it really all that much  more sanctified to frost and eat a cross than to do the same to a rabbit- shaped cookie?  I need to shut up before I go off on a tangent about South Park's spoof of the DaVinci Code.

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4 comments:

  1. I found it particularly interesting how Michelle was talking about how sad she felt for all the orphaned children they visited while in China. Do they think that only the barren are responsible for parenting orphans?

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  2. Yup. I'm not necessarily crazy about the idea of abortion, but to make thwarting it practically your life's cause, then to go on to practically populate a state with your own biological offspring instead of offering a home to one or two needy orphans in addition to your own spawn seems just a tad,well, maybe hypocritcal.

    I understand that some of the girls want the family to adopt. I'm glad the girls are in favor of it, since they'll be doing 99.999999% of the work in parenting the poor adopted children.

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  3. Going to anything that features the Duggars usually means I will immediately contract a case of Duggaritis and by the time I am done I will feel sick from indulging my vicarious interest in these people. Pants, bathing suits, t.v., Easter, dating for no real reason but fun, I have all that or have had all that in my life, plus - umm, being independent when I was young, drinking, smoking, yelling, a whole bunch of stuff. The Duggars don't give a horses ---- about me and never will. No wonder I feel a bit sick from my bouts of Duggaritis.

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    Replies
    1. I can relate. i find myself watching even as it sickens me.

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